David Davis, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union.
Photograph: Reuters

It goes without saying that I am an expert on the ECJ, EEA, Efta and in particular the Moldovan agreement that allows Liechtenstein to share the single market. It goes without saying mainly because it is untrue. My knowledge is probably on a par with David Davis’s, to be honest, which is worrying to say the least. Many people will not understand the minutiae of trade, tariffs and jurisdiction, nor indeed have the time or inclination to find out. Maybe they should not be allowed a vote? Or do an exam? “Taking back control” now resembles some sweaty negotiators not waving but drowning in a sea of legalese.

This is one of the most significant events of my lifetime. So why, I wonder, is it so monumentally boring? Sometimes I think this is a dastardly European strategy: suffocate us with paperwork, bore us into submission and maybe Brexit will take decades. This is all very important, so why is it like listening to someone explain how they did their conveyancing? You just want to die. In some other world, everyone reads the terms and conditions of everything they click online or sign. But lots of us don’t live in that world. We are idiots.

This is the argument still made by remainers. I have no idea what a hard remainer is. The ones who are not so much angry as deeply disappointed? Well, they say, no one understood the terms and conditions of the referendum. Therefore anyone who voted leave was stupid, disturbed, racist and elderly. There should be another referendum so that the clever, rational, youthful, anti-racist voice of the country can now be heard. But why were remainers so devoid of emotional intelligence? In what relationship breakup does anyone scream “Don’t leave me! Remain”? They say “Stay.” Stay has resonance. Remain has no oomph. It is passion-free.

Sure, I voted remain in the end but always felt quite Brexity, because voting for the status quo, chivvied along by all the main parties, bankers and the entire cultural establishment made me see why sticking two fingers up was an attractive option. Telling people they were going to lose out economically, when they already felt they had, was a presumption too far.

That this was in part an anti-immigration vote, which has led to increased hate crime and racism, that the NHS will suffer as a result, that people who have lived here all their lives now feel under threat, is a result of all this. Yet the uncomfortable fact remains that many in this country still just want Brexit to be speeded up.

There is still an absolute refusal to see why the vote to leave happened and, therefore, how its effects could be ameliorated. Friends often tell me that they know for sure everyone now regrets it, because a cousin went on holiday and moaned about the exchange rate, or some such. Anecdotal evidence is not borne out by polls, but the skin of the remain bubble is unpoppable.

Anthony Barnett’s brilliant new book The Lure of Greatness sets out some of the reasons for how we got here, from the lack of trust in government engendered by the Iraq war, to the crash. He quotes Brian Eno: “There was a revolution brewing and we didn’t spot it. Because we didn’t make it. We expected we were going to be the revolution.”

This is hard to face up to, but it’s true. Leave was seen as the province of the unsophisticated, the uneducated, the old and those who wanted a cultural change – backwards.

Surely the left should be alert to the fact that the less educated people are, the less likely they are to be able to change their own lives? When Barnett describes Brexit as “an old people’s home” we now see that some of these old people are Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Labour is not offering much of an alternative – unless its fudge is a Machiavellian strategy, it is a mess, quite frankly. I know people who will never vote Labour again, but they sure as hell did not vote Lib Dem when given the chance to oppose leaving the EU. Brexit is a bigger issue at the dinner party than on the doorstep. The numbing details of the practicality of Brexit allow the current gravity-defying prevarication of the Labour party. It may all be disastrous, and none of their policies will be enacted if we go into decline, but hey, let’s join the dots later … or never.

If Brexit can be read as a cri de cœur against neoliberalism (the EU is without a doubt its highest form), austerity or globalisation, this has to be harnessed to a progressive position. This discussion was not had because remainers made so little distinction between Europe (lovely, modern, cultured and er ... holidays) and the EU (drunk, overpaid, unaccountable ex-bankers). “Indefensibly undemocratic and economically sclerotic”, as Barnett describes it.

To leave, however, will impoverish us in all sorts of ways if we don’t understand the cultural, as well as the economic, implications. Meanwhile, we continue to discuss the 48% as an aberration, while hoping the devil that will fell Brexit is in the details. This is England. Read the terms and conditions.